Pasilla Bajío Seeds

Some chillies are grown for heat. This one is grown for its deep, rich, complex flavour, and it's one of the great cornerstones of Mexican cooking. The Pasilla Bajío is the classic pasilla, the chilaca pepper that dries into the dark, raisiny chile negro, one of the essential chillies of the great mole sauces. If you cook Mexican food seriously, this is a plant to have.

A little name-untangling helps here. Fresh, this long, slender, dark green pepper is the chilaca. Dried, it becomes the pasilla, which means "little raisin", a nod to its wrinkled, dark brown-black skin and raisiny aroma, and it's also called chile negro. The Bajío refers to a classic pasilla-growing region of Mexico, distinguishing this strain. It's part of the "holy trinity" of mole chillies, alongside the ancho and mulato, the trio that forms the base of Mexico's most famous sauces. The pods grow long and tapering, up to 20cm or more, ripening from dark green to a deep brown-black.

The flavour is the whole appeal: rich, deep and complex, with raisiny, berry-like, and even subtle cocoa and dried-herb notes, and a mild, gentle heat. It's dark and satisfying without any real fire, the kind of flavour that gives a sauce its soul.

This one's for the cook. If you make mole, salsas, adobos or slow-braised Mexican dishes, or you simply want a mild, deeply flavoured chilli the whole household can enjoy, the Pasilla Bajío is a genuine kitchen essential. No heat tolerance required, just an appreciation for good, deep flavour.

As a mild annuum, the Pasilla Bajío is fairly approachable to grow, though it likes a decent season to ripen and dry its long pods, so give it a good start in NZ.

Sow seeds indoors from late August to September. You can start in July with steady warmth, but there's less urgency than with the slow chinense types, so spring sowing suits it well.

If you like, soak seeds for 12 to 24 hours before sowing to soften the coat, then pat them dry. Sow two seeds per cell, about 5mm deep, in good seed-raising mix. Keep them consistently warm at 20 to 30 degrees Celsius. Annuum seeds are generally obliging and usually germinate within a week or two.

Keep the mix moist but never soggy. Once seedlings are up with a couple of true leaves, pot them on and keep them warm and bright.

When they reach 100 to 150mm tall and the weather has warmed properly, move them to their final home, in the ground or a pot of 20 litres or so. Full sun and a bit of shelter, and they'll get on with it.

The plant grows tall and productive, and the long pods carry some weight, so a stake keeps it upright and the fruit off the ground once it's cropping well.

The Pasilla Bajío makes a tall, productive plant that crops generously, giving you plenty of those long, slender pods through summer. A stake is worth having once it starts setting those long chilacas.

Pinch out the main growing tip early to encourage branching. More branches means more flowering sites, which means a heavier crop of those long, flavourful pods.

Water consistently, keeping the soil evenly moist. Erratic watering brings on blossom end rot, those dark sunken patches on the pod tips, which the long pods can be prone to, so steady is the goal, especially for potted plants that dry out fast in a NZ summer.

Go easy on the feeding. As with most fruiting peppers, too much nitrogen gives you a lush leafy plant and fewer fruits. A tomato fertiliser at flowering is plenty.

Because it's most often used dried, keep an eye on ripeness. If your aim is dried pasilla, you'll want to let the pods ripen fully to deep brown-black on the plant before drying them, so give the season time to do its work. Keep picking to keep the plant productive.

Like many chillies, it can be overwintered as a perennial. Bring it somewhere frost-free, cut it back in autumn, and it'll return in spring with a head start.

Expect your first pods around 80 to 100 days from transplant, though for the classic dried pasilla you'll wait a little longer to let them colour up fully.

You can use them fresh as chilaca once they've matured, lovely roasted and peeled, but this pepper is really at its best dried, when its rich, raisiny, complex flavour concentrates and deepens. Let the pods ripen fully to a deep brown-black on the plant, then dry them down to the wrinkled pasilla negro.

Snip them off with scissors rather than tugging, since the branches can be brittle on a tall plant. And pick regularly to keep the plant flowering and fruiting.

No gloves needed here. At 1,000 to 2,500 SHU there's little on these pods to trouble your hands, which makes harvesting and prep relaxed affairs.

For storage, drying is the traditional and best route, and the chilaca dries beautifully into the classic pasilla. Dry the ripe pods in a dehydrator or a warm, airy spot until leathery but still supple (a good pasilla bends without snapping), and they'll keep for many months in an airtight container away from light. Fresh pods keep a week or so in the fridge, and both fresh and dried freeze well.

Let's set expectations: this is a mild chilli, sitting at around 1,000 to 2,500 SHU. That's gentle, roughly on a par with a poblano or a mild jalapeno, and much of the time you'll find the pasilla's heat softened further still by being diluted into a sauce or mole. Only the sweet peppers and near-heatless types sit below it.

What you get instead of fire is flavour, and lots of it: a warm, gentle heat that sits beneath the rich, raisiny, complex character rather than on top of it. It's the kind of warmth that rounds out a sauce without ever dominating, which is exactly why the pasilla is so valued in complex dishes like mole, where a dozen ingredients need to speak without any one shouting.

As with any chilli, growing conditions nudge the number a little, and a long hot summer can push it towards the upper end of that modest range. But this pepper was never about heat, and its mildness is precisely what makes it so useful.

For most cooks, the pasilla's gentle warmth is a feature, not a shortcoming. It's a chilli you use for depth and richness, and one the whole family can eat.

An easygoing plant with the usual short watch-list.

Aphids will go for the soft new growth in spring. A blast from the hose or a squash between the fingers handles small numbers, and ladybirds and lacewings do the rest if you let them. Whitefly can build up in a warm greenhouse, so yellow sticky traps and decent airflow keep them honest.

At the seedling stage, damping off is the main risk. Use fresh seed-raising mix, avoid overwatering, and give trays a bit of air movement. Slugs and snails will happily mow down young transplants overnight, so protect new plantings until they've toughened up.

The long-podded chilaca can be a touch prone to blossom end rot if watering is erratic, showing as dark sunken patches on the pod ends. It's a calcium-uptake hiccup brought on by inconsistent moisture, not a disease, and steady watering prevents it. Root rot from waterlogged soil is the other classic, seen off by free-draining mix and sensible watering.

If you're drying your harvest, watch ripe pods for any soft spots or mould before they go into the dehydrator, and dry them promptly once fully coloured. Nothing here is dramatic, though. A well-watered, well-drained plant in a sunny spot will crop happily all season.

This is a flavour chilli through and through, and Mexican cooking is where it belongs, particularly the great sauces.

Mole and the classic sauces are its calling. As one of the holy trinity of mole chillies, the pasilla brings a deep, rich, raisiny, subtly cocoa-like character that anchors and balances the flavours around it. Toasted gently, soaked and blended with its companions the ancho and mulato, it's a foundation stone of Mexico's most celebrated sauces. Toast it carefully, though, since burnt pasilla turns bitter.

Beyond mole, it's a workhorse of salsas, adobos and marinades. Rehydrated and blended, it makes a rich, dark, complex sauce, superb with everything from beef and lamb to mushrooms and duck, and it's particularly prized in sauces for seafood. The fresh chilaca is lovely roasted and peeled, then sliced into rajas or stirred through soups and stews.

Ground into powder, dried pasilla becomes a superb all-purpose seasoning for rubs, soups, beans and braises, adding colour and a deep, raisiny complexity. It pairs beautifully with garlic, tomato and dark meats.

The through-line is deep, complex, dark flavour without heat. Because it's mild, the pasilla plays well with almost everything and adds a richness and depth that hotter chillies can't, precisely because they'd overwhelm the dish. This is a chilli you cook with for soul, and one that makes you a better cook for having it.